The 17 Most Cringe-Worthy Moments From the "Bachelor" Finale

"I'm standing in a barn where I raised my first pig."

1. The subtle, subtle symbolism of the Arlington Water Tower.Right at the top of the hour, the aerial B-roll of farmer Chris Soules's hometown of Arlington, Iowa, rammed right through the show's basic subtext: It treated us to a loving visual caress of the phallic, flesh-toned water tower, mighty in its eternal rigid thrust, poking the Midwestern sky ... you get the gist.

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2. Imagining how the hell you explain The Bachelor to a 5-year old girl.The first scene was at Chris's parents' house, where he greeted his entire family, including at least two adorable, wee nieces who probably had some interesting questions about why Uncle Chris was going lady-shopping with big TV cameras. We assume their mother said, "Well, women are just buffet items under the giant sneezeguard of a man's life, and so this weird and antiquated show makes them compete to shack up in a fantasy suite with some total dipshit they barely know, in the hopes that he'll eventually be forced to give one of them a free diamond he got in exchange for PR, and which she will have to give back after the inevitable breakup." Or, maybe more succinctly, "Uncle Chris has lost his mind. Let's read a book."

3. Any time Chris had to think.We're not sure if this is his actual natural face (above), or if Chris taught himself to stare pensively into middle-distance by watching Matthew McConaughey's Lincoln commercials. But every time he listened "thoughtfully" or nodded or otherwise attempted to digest all the syllables being hurled at his ears, all we could hear was, "I've been driving a plow since long before anybody paid me to drive one..."

4. Any time Chris had to speak. At least McConaughey's pauses are pregnant with the promise of something gloriously inscrutable about, like, love. Or steak. Or how love is like steak. ("Hit with the right amount of heat, and then sit back and sup on the succulence," we imagine him intoning). Chris's are just empty ellipses. Behold: "Becca's athletic, and she's ... has ... I don't know, she's ... kinda ... she's also very grounded, and very ... um ... someone who would ground me ... not that I'm not grounded, but ... she's ... she's got certain qualities that are ... different. But cool." Imagine living in a town of 300 people, and that is who you have to talk to every day. Additionally, words are basically the only plot in The Bachelor finale. The entire two hours consists of just one guy trying to string along two ladies by yapping in meaningless circles. It would have been nice if that guy had been someone for whom forming sentences doesn't feel like nudging a boulder up his throat and out his mouth.

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5. Whitney playing the orphan trump card with Chris's mom.There is no better way to win a mother's heart than explaining, with halting emotion, that all you've ever really wanted is someone to call "mom" or "dad" again. We actually sympathize with that feeling, and we don't doubt that Whitney does really want a family, given that her father is MIA and her mother is dead. But telling a virtual stranger's mother that you would like her to be your new mother is taking "get to a man's heart through his parents" and turning it up well past 11. You've known them for three hours, kid. Save something in reserve for when you've known them at least a week.

6. Becca's total disinterest in what Chris's family thought of her. Whitney showed up for her full-court parental press with wine and flowers — a variety that she explained were her own late mother's favorites, no less. Becca breezed in with a plastic platter of sugar cookies that she clearly grabbed at some rando Walmart between the airport and Prince Farming's Maize Palace. We're not trying to look a gift pastry in the mouth, but when your Bachelor is worried that you might not be sufficiently committed to this relationship, at the very least try to find a place that will put your baked offering into a proper box.

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7. Chris's inability to understand something totally understandable.Chris seemed seriously gobsmacked by Becca's reticence to move to Arlington immediately — which, for reference once again, has, like, six residents and 10 million ears of corn. In fact, when she worried aloud to him what Arlington might hold for her as a human person who wants a career of her own, he just blinked, as if he thinks "career" is just the noise his rig makes when it stalls. She is 26, dude. She lives in San Diego. She's going to want a good sales pitch on your wee rural Iowa town, beyond that you two can make delicious vegetables and cute babies, and if you not only can't give it but don't understand that she's asking for it? Fail.

8. An actual farming date. "It's one of the happier moments of my life — harvesting and getting things," said our nation's future poet laureate, as he made Whitney hold his hand and smile in the freezing cold, on the back of a tractor, while they watched someone else pick corn. Psst, Chris: Reaping is more of a metaphor for death, not the birth of purest love.

9. Whitney's attempts to get psyched on her actual farming date.Full marks to Whitney. She really tried. She choked down her inability to find corn stalks even symbolically sexy. She cooed that she never imagined farming involved "all this" (so ... machines and picking vegetables?). She said things like, "This could be my future for [pauses, gulps] a long, long, long, long time," and, "There is no ounce of me that feels insecure about this," as she stared at the ground instead of at the camera. We give her four months of living in Arlington before she starts a side gig peddling Stella & Dot to the other farmers' wives out of sheer boredom (she does love a statement necklace). We're pretty sure even the cows chilling outside Chris's barn were humming the FarmersOnly.com jingle.

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10. The ENTIRE Final Rose Ceremony. This actually probably was the Most! Shocking! Finale! Ever! Because IT WAS SET IN A FREEZING BARN IN IOWA. Generally, these affairs are in Italy or wine country or an island someplace telegenically warm and vacation-y and expensive. Last night, the big suspenseful ending opened with Chris announcing, "I'm standing in a barn where I raised my first pig." (Has the production company gone broke?) And conditions did not improve: It was so cold in that hallowed Pig Barn that you could see Chris's breath every time he spoke — it actually exploded in Whitney's face during the proposal — and the place was decorated like someone had had a stroke in an Anthropologie, all candles and stained glass windows and hanging lanterns and empty mason jars. Props to the set dressers for giving it their all, but sometimes you cannot put lipstick on a pig barn. Because it's a pig barn.

Inside the pig barn.

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11. When Becca reacted coolly to rejection.Becca clearly knew she didn't want a ring — and as soon as she popped out of the limo not having done her hair at all, so did the entire audience. (For comparison: Whitney went full Disney Princess Updo.) The producers couldn't even coax any regret out of her in the limo, post-pink-slip, where her mouth formed polite words but her brain was clearly trying to decide what movie to watch on the plane home.

We commend her for maintaining as much dignity as one can maintain while being dumped in a pig barn by by a guy who once dribbled at her, "I want everything that you can give me, like, from your heart, that I can have, right now, just ... to know." (And for not getting blitzed on free Champagne until she started crying about leaving behind those Walmart cookies, because the producers totally would have recast that as heartache.)

12. When Chris's tear ducts were bone dry. During his proposal to Whitney, a dry Chris tried to contort his eyeballs in any way possible that might drum up some emotion. Instead he just looked like he was trying to suppress a nuclear sneeze.

13. When Chris maybe just sniffed Becca's hair? This episode all but bought a neon flashing sign that said, "He's only picking Whitney because she's the sure thing." And it got worse during After The Final Rose: Chris hemmed and hawed when asked if he'd have chosen differently if Becca had choked out an "I love you," and then when Becca came out, Chris hugged her so long and hard that we're pretty sure he was committing her smell and feel to memory. He then proceeded to lean into her so hard that even Sheryl Sandberg would be like, "Never mind, lean out. Way out."

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14. When Whitney's dress was shorter than her courtship with Chris.Whitney finally got to join her fiancé onstage for their first public outing ever — well, other than the times she snuck to Arlington, for which host Chris Harrison roundly scolded her, and she awesomely clearly did not care. And when she met her Soules mate on stage, she threw her arms around his shoulders so hard that her minidress snuck up to her underbum. However: It did thankfully appear to stick there. Did she line the hem with tape? Maybe this kid will be OK in Iowa after all — she does seem resourceful.

15. When Whitney seemed completely unable to SELL this.On "After the Final Rose," we also learned that Whitney hasn't watched this season at all. Which probably isn't a bad strategy — except she asserted that she's completely cool with this while gulping insecurely, and during her ensuing monlogue about how confident she feels in their relationship, Chris stared straight at the floor. Between that and his body language with Becca: We have concerns.

16. That ridiculous cow BS. Does anyone really watch any part of The Bachelor and think, What this is really missing is 20 minutes of Jimmy Kimmel mugging and asking questions about people's sex lives? The answer is no. And especially not after tonight, when he dragged a defenseless, innocent cow onstage during "After The Final Rose" — a living, breathing, about to be existentially depressed cow — and said to Whitney and Chris, "I wanted to get you something you could use on that horrible farm you're moving to." First: A cow is not an appropriate engagement gift unless you're living in Little House on the Prairie. Second: Given Jimmy's earlier line of questioning about how often Chris and Whitney have sex, and the fact that Becca is so famously a virgin, there was a crass "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" subtext at work that left a very unpleasant taste in our mouth.

17. That Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Bachelorette Twist.Speaking of unpleasant: The concept behind the new season of The Bachelorette is, not to put too fine a point on it, total sexist bullshit. The show is going to open with two women — Chris's rejectees Kaitlin and Britt — and the male houseguests will vote on which woman gets to stay and be their Bachelorette. We repeat: She has to win a popularity contest, or some kind of sex-appeal pageant, before she can win their hearts. Because this franchise really needed to take away more agency from the women involved and hand it straight back to the men. Kaitlin and Britt tried to smile gamely, but they seemed pissed, and we can't blame them. To let them believe their fates were in their own hands at last, only to wrench that relief away and then pit them against each other again — and at the mercy of 25 guys instead of just one — is a bait-and-switch that's not only cruel, but tone-deaf. The whole beauty of The Bachelorette is that the power dynamic is inverted, so congrats, ABC, you just undid the only subversive or interesting thing about your entire show. No roses for you.

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